Alpha Kubota made a long journey before landing on the left side of the defense of Épinal which receives Saint-Etienne Thursday evening in the Coupe de France (9 p.m.). At 18, he left his native Japan without speaking a word of French and tried his luck in Bordeaux.
If he packed his bags, it was to flee a hostile local atmosphere where his skin color was sometimes a problem on the ground. "My father is Japanese and my mother Sierra Leonean," he explains. In Japan, there are few blacks. So, I happened to hear cries of monkeys or things like that. At one point, I couldn't take certain looks too much. "
He landed in Bordeaux on the advice of a cousin, Iya Traoré, who made a name for himself in France in the freestyle field and who was one of the attractions of the Montmartre district where he multiplied juggling exercises with the ball . "When I got there, I knew how to say it just goes and yes in French," he smiles.
He won a place in the Bordeaux reserve team. The Girondins, aware of his qualities but especially of his shortcomings, send him to harden in Drancy, then in National 2. Two years later, he tried his luck in Montceau-les-Mines where his performances were fairly average.
"This French Cup adventure is a real dream"
"There were too many transferred players and not everyone could play," he said. But I finished the season well. Which allowed me to be approached by Cholet (National) and especially Lorient (L2). In Brittany, Kubota is already initialing the first professional contract of his French career, but things are going bad. "I made the mistake of asking a second agent, in addition to mine, and Lorient did not appreciate it," he admits.
In August 2018, he was without a club when the saving phone call arrived. At the end of the line, Xavier Collin, the Epinal coach. The business is done quickly. “For two years, it's been great and this adventure in the Coupe de France is a real dream. I want to believe that it will serve me to go even higher. "
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Higher perhaps, but further away. "I haven't set foot in Japan for two years," he says. And I don't talk too much to my mother anymore. There, I think they haven't heard of my Cup adventure. If we go to the semi-finals, maybe some newspapers will write it. But I am happy in France. Here, it does not say that I am a black on the ground. What is beautiful in France is this mixture of colors. We are so many blacks that you don't notice it. Alpha no longer has any reason to feel bad.